"Seeking Light"
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Rev. Laura J. Collins
January 4, 2004
"We three kings of Orient are ..."
The images and the tradition are so strong that it is hard to hear this story from Matthew and realize that it includes no mention of how many visitors from the East came to Jesus and that, however many there might have been, they clearly were not kings. They were astrologers, people who read the stars for signs of what was happening in the world.
What these particular eastern astrologers had noticed was that a new ruler had been born. They are traveling to find out who it is that has come and how they are to respond. In addition to the stars, they choose to consult with the politicians and religious leaders of the day. That proves nearly disastrous, as Herod the Great is furious to discover there might be another ruler getting ready to take over. Fortunately, the astrologers receive another message through a dream, which they are wise enough to trust more than they trusted Herod's political promises. And so they return home by a different route, to avoid being party to his jealous maneuverings.
This Biblical story sets up a variety of contrasts for us to ponder: between dreams and visions on the one hand and political realities on the other. Between conventional religious understanding by leaders inside the faith and mystical insight by easterners outside the faith. Between a response of fear and a response of awe.
And the bias of the story is unequivocal. The outsiders have it right. The ones who seek signs in the stars have noticed more than those who stick to the conventions. The ones who kneel down in adoration and offering are the ones who are wise.
Epiphany is our name for this celebration in the church year. It means, simply, manifestation. When what is true becomes manifest. When's God's light appears. And we celebrate this manifestation to remind ourselves that we continue to have a choice: to follow conventional political and religious thinking, fraught with fears and jealousies and divisions, or to seek visions and dreams so full of light and truth that they cause us to fall on our knees in awe and to offer the best we have as a humble response.
Personally, I think the reason that the latter is so seldom done is that it is really harder than it sounds. It has a beautiful ring to it: who doesn't want to reach for the stars and live in the light? But honestly, it means, as it did for those early astrologers, a long hard journey across lots of desert, with not much to guide you and no sure outcomes. And the end of the journey doesn't provide that much incentive in this story, at least. The wise ones didn't get promoted, reach nirvana, or achieve world peace. Rather, they were humbled beyond words and then they had to get back on their camels and go home.
They did, however, achieve something that Herod failed to find: delight. The scripture says, depending on your translation, that they were overjoyed, excited, thrilled, filled with gladness, delighted, to find the place where the star had led them. So, they didn't achieve world peace, but they did find delight.
It reminds me of the oft-quoted Joseph Campbell phrase, that we should "follow our bliss." The thing that bothered me about that phrase when it became popular in the yuppie-filled 80s was that the bliss people sometimes seemed to be following didn't necessarily have much to offer the rest of the world. Just "my" bliss, not our bliss. Compare this to how Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day OUR daily bread." Not mine, ours. So before we turn this story of seeking the light into just a personal spiritual quest for delight, we might think about the person on whom the light landed. Jesus offered light to the nations and healing to all peoples -- and let us know that our light is meant to shine for others as well.
I don't know what those astrologers did with the rest of their lives after the trip to Judah. And maybe that is one of the points of the story as well. We don't need to know. Because the lessons we learn from them are to seek the light, no matter how arduous or unsure the journey, and to let ourselves be humbled and awed by the delight of finding God's own light alive in the world. The humility and the delight are intimately bound together. Hubris does not encounter delight. Humility does.
When we think we have a handle on the truth, we're probably holding something else entirely. In one of my favorite books, Callings, author Gregg Levoy says, "The truth may set you free, but there's an even chance that first it will scare the daylights out of you." If we're not a little bit afraid of where the light takes us, if we're not sort of overwhelmed and amazed by the enormity of it all, then we're probably just looking at a low-wattage bulb, a substitute for the real thing.
Each one of us is called to seek the light. The light of truth for our lives, the light of healing for our world, the light of God. In our religious lingo, we talk about having a vocation. Vocations are not something religious people have; they are something all people have because all people are God's people. So if you were born, you have a vocation, a calling.
Levoy tells how one spring day he was on a country road in Fresno, California and suddenly he noticed, in the light coming through the trees, great streams of yellow pollen, sweeping by in the wind. He realized that every speck was filled with information -- "blueprints for making perfect blue flowers, the dark musculature of trees, meadow grasses." He wrote: "I saw in that moment that the whole sky is filled with furtive transmissions -- pollen and seeds, radio waves and subatomic particles, the songs of birds, satellite broadcasts of the six o'clock news and the Home Shopping Network. And I saw that what is necessary to make substance of meaning out of any of it is a receiver, somebody to receive."
The thing about having a calling is that you need to hear it. Our calling is there, in the furtive messages of the wind, in the signs in the stars, in the intuitions we feel and the insights of friends and strangers. We need to have the channels open to receive it. Our hands open to accept it. Vocation is not a goal to pursue, but a calling to hear. And if we're pretty sure we already know what it is that life is asking of us, then our hands are too full to accept anything new. Parker Palmer notes that it is possible to live a life other than one's own and warns, "'Faking it' in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail."
The wise astrologers remind us that the path toward the light may be unconventional by the standards of religious thinking, but if our search is honest and open to the God of all creation, then the holy may encounter us wherever we are. As we begin a new year, these travelers remind us to follow the stars God has set for us. To find our true calling, to have the perseverance to make the journey and the humility to accept what we find.
And what did they find? Of course, they found the Christ child. God-with-us, Immanuel. If we are seeking the light for our own lives, there is no better place to start than by staring into the face of this one whom God sent. We may find, if we do, that we will be led, like the visitors from the East, to kneel down and offer the best we have to offer, in humility and delight.
Sources
Gregg Levoy. Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997.
Parker Palmer. Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 2000.
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